Something might have been done for Egypt, even at this time, if England had occupied the country; but Mr. Disraeli lost the golden opportunity, which did not return till France and Russia were in a position to offer an effective resistance which could not be bought off. The Khedive appealed for money to England, and Mr. Disraeli sent Mr. Cave to report upon his affairs. Mr. Cave said in effect that it was impossible to help the Khedive with money unless Englishmen were prepared to lose it. That report, however, did not touch the position of those who held with Mr. Edward Dicey that if England could establish a Protectorate in Egypt, and administer her affairs like an Indian Native State, it would be quite possible to extricate her from her financial difficulties without inflicting injustice on her creditors. In the meantime, the foreign bondholders sued the Khedive in his own Mixed Tribunals. They got judgment against him, but were unable to execute it. In May, 1876, his Highness met this judgment by a decree of repudiation, whereupon Germany indignantly protested, and France and England followed suit on behalf of the bondholders of their respective nationalities. It was here that Lord Salisbury first left the traditional lines of sound Foreign Policy. He interfered in Egypt, not on the ground that national interests had to be safeguarded, but--like Lord Palmerston in the case of Greece--to protect the interests of a few speculative individuals who had a bad debt to collect from Ismail Pasha. British national interests in Egypt, when really imperilled, can only be protected effectively in one way--by the occupation of the country, or its administration under a British Protectorate. They cannot be protected by entering into an ambiguous partnership for regulating the Khedive’s finances with Powers whose interests in Egypt are not national, but are represented by those of their subjects who have lent Egypt money on bad security. The Imperial interests of England demand that the government of Egypt shall be good and effective all round, so that the highway to India shall be through an orderly and contented people. The interests of the other Powers demand that the government of Egypt, whether good or bad, must be such as will enable her to give the Shylocks, whom they represent, their pound of flesh. It was for the interest of England to aim at a Protectorate, just as it was for the interests of the other Powers to aim merely at obtaining financial control over Egypt; and the fatal blunder which Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury made was in identifying England, not with British, but with foreign interests in Egypt. The French and English bondholders could not agree on the steps which should be taken to extort their money from the overtaxed Egyptian peasantry; and Mr. Goschen and M. Joubert were sent out to devise a scheme for consolidating the Egyptian debt in the common interests of all bondholders.